I assume solving one of the major open problems of physics?

Would this be possible without it being able to run novel real-world physics experiments autonomously?

(Note: I am not suggesting we let it do this. Please don't, in fact)

AI could discover candidate novel physics without autonomously operating new physical experiments, and humans or instruments can later independently validate the result. This is analogous to how Einstein developed theories whose predictions were confirmed by experiments and observations only years or decades later.

Do we have any examples of an current day AI system introducing a novel concept or perspective. We've got plenty of counterexamples discovered and some theorems proven, but afaik nothing analogous to a new definition.

Pharmaceuticals already are…

It could be a good theoretical physicist. Actually it could be a good experimental physicist as well since senior experimental physicists use grad students for the manual labor.

Why not?

That's how we get AM.

That’s already been done. I know of at least one novel result contributed by Claude to frontier physics. I’m sure there is more.

For it to be like a human it wouldn't just need to solve existing phsyics problems, it would need to push the field forward and introduce new paradigms.

Solving "open problems" will push the field forward.

My comment wasn't very long, yet you somehow still ignored the main part, "and introduce new paradigms". The point is whether it can do everything humans can, entirely new theoretical frameworks and ideas, such as string theory or dark matter, are not coming out of AI at the moment.